Heroes of the Storm Live Patch Notes - August 7, 2019

Blizzard Entertainment6 August 2019

The next Heroes of the Storm patch has arrived! The update brings a new Hero, Qhira the Iresian Bounty Hunter, alongside bug fixes, new bundles, new skins, and much more! Dive on in for more information.

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General

New Hero: Qhira, Iresian Bounty Hunter

A sworn knight and holder of a singularity shard, Qhira’s only desire is to seek out others who may have escaped the destruction of her doomed home realm, Iresia. While she searches, she gets by as a bounty hunter--- a job she loathes, despite her exceptional skill.

Trait

Grappling Hook [D]

Qhira fires a Grappling Hook that pulls her to any terrain it contacts. If an enemy Hero is hit, they take 36 damage and Qhira launches at them, dealing an additional 112 damage on impact. Can be used while Revolving Sweep is active.

Active: Qhira deals 33 damage and heals for 88 health per enemy Hero affected. Damage and healing is increased by 50% per each additional stack on that Hero.

Cost: 35 Mana

Cooldown: 8 seconds

Revolving Sweep [E]

​Attach your sword to the first enemy Hero hit, Stunning them for .25 seconds. Once attached, Qhira becomes immune to all effects, swinging around the target for 2.75 seconds, and dealing 109 damage to any enemies between you and the target. Reactivate to send you to the target’s location, knocking them back, dealing 112 damage and Stunning them for .75 seconds.

Cost: 70 Mana

Cooldown: 16 Seconds

​Heroic Abilities

Unrelenting Strikes [R1]

​Deal 46 damage to all nearby enemies every .5 seconds for 2.5 seconds as your sword grows outward. Upon expiring, deal 86 damage to all nearby enemy Heroes and Stun them for .75 seconds.

Cost: 60 Mana

Cooldown: 75 Seconds

Final Strike [R2]

After 1 second, strike your sword in a line to deal 432 damage to all enemies in its path. This damage is increased by 25% to any enemy below 50% Health.

Storm League

Storm League - Season 1, 2019

Leaving a Ranked Match Lobby or Game results in a 500 Rank Point penalty which can be slowly regained in future matches.

Placement Matches have been reduced from 10 to 3.

Promotion and Demotion games have been removed and players will seamlessly transition through Leagues and Divisions.

The MMR range has been rebuilt and remapped to handle this.

A Team Leader (banning player in Ranked Draft) is selected on the highest Rank for placed players, or MMR for unplaced ones. In mixed teams, placed players have priority.

Rank Decay has been adjusted

Only players that are Diamond 5 or higher and that have finished their Placement Matches are eligible for decay

If a player's decay timer is less than 3 days, it resets to 3 days upon playing a Storm League game. If the timer is at or above 3 days, players will gain an additional grace day for each game played (up to a maximum of 30).

A Ranked Seasonal Questline is now available to players

This Questline will be available each Season and must be completed in order to be eligible for both the Ranked Seasonal Rewards and the Grand Master Leaderboards.

[UPDATE] We are currently revising the list of maps but the below list will be the final map rotation for Storm League.

[NEW] The Storm League pool is now:

Alterac Pass

Battlefield of Eternity

Braxis Holdout

Cursed Hollow

Dragon Shire

Hanamura Temple

Infernal Shrines

Sky Temple

Tomb of the Spider Queen

Towers of Doom

Volskaya Foundry

The Quick Match pool is now:

All maps that are available in Storm League

Blackheart’s Bay

Garden of Terror

Warhead Junction

[NEW] Dev Comment: Due to players dissatisfaction with their favorite Battleground being removed or least favorite added, and also us questioning the value that we were gaining by having a Battleground rotation, we’ve decided to get our Storm League pool to 11 Battlegrounds and probably leave it there for the immediate future. The original idea behind a rotation was to facilitate a different metagame and make the game feel fresh and different, but we found that this wasn’t really panning out this way and in fact created more confusion and volatility than enjoyment. We still think that altering the game from season to season is important to keep things feeling fresh, and we’ll be exploring ways to do this beyond our regular Hero updates and new Heroes in the future.

Map Updates

Braxis Holdout

Functionality of the Braxis control-point is now consistent with that of Dragon Shire

Zerg Waves

Make-up and stats of the Zerg Wave units have been adjusted

Zergling

Health reduced from 750 to 450

Health scaling over time increased

Damage increased from 5 to 10

Damage scaling over time decreased

No longer has a 10% damage penalty to Structures

Baneling

Health reduced from 500 to 450

Health scaling over time increased

Damage increased from 55 to 150

Damage scaling over time decreased

Now have a 50% damage bonus to Heroes

No longer have a 50% damage bonus to Structures

Explosion radius increased from 2.75 to 3

Now prefers attacking Structures

Hydralisk

Health reduced from 1500 to 850

Health scaling over time increased

Damage increased from 25 to 70

Damage scaling over time decreased

No longer have a 10% damage penalty to Structures

Guardian

Health reduced from 2250 to 1000

Health scaling over time increased

Damage increased from 80 to 110

Damage scaling over time decreased

No longer have a 25% damage penalty to Structures

Ultralisk

Health reduced from 6000 to 4700

Health scaling over time increased

Damage increased from 50 to 100

Damage scaling over time decreased

No longer have a 10% damage penalty to Structures

While attacking, Guardian and Ultralisks now spawn Drop Pods with 3 Zerglings and 1 Hydralisk (can occur once every 13 seconds)​

Developer Comment: We've made some changes to Braxis to even out the power curve of Zerg waves and introduce what we've found is a fun new mechanic in Drop Pods. By causing reinforcements of Zerg to periodically appear via Drop Pods, it makes some effects like Planet Cracker and Lava Wave a little less powerful against them. It also provides a stronger focus for single target characters, as removing Ultralisks and Guardians earlier will cause fewer Drop Pods to spawn, thereby indirectly helping against the massive zerg onslaught. The tuning changes get the zerg in line with most of our other Mercenaries and Minions, which mostly mirror a Hero's power level over the course of a game (though Battleground events tend to get more deadly in the late game to force a conclusion to matches). Overall, we think you'll enjoy these small changes to Braxis. It won't greatly change the way the Battleground feels but introduce a little freshness to the map while helping balance a few longstanding issues with over the top Hero imbalances on the Battleground.